Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

“But why would he have left any of her up at Guadalcanal?” Julie asked. “Wouldn’t it have been better – safer – to take the whole skeleton? ”

Gideon shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe people already knew that there was a partial skeleton there, so he couldn’t take it all. Or perhaps someone came along and interrupted him. Or, most likely, it’s simply that the upper part was all he needed for the hoax. So that’s what he took, along with a few fragments of the lower body so it didn’t look too remarkable. Why risk fooling around trying to find and dig up the rest?”

Whatever the reason, once that was accomplished, Gunderson donated the Guadalcanal dig to the University of Cadiz, and the Gibraltar Point site to the Horizon Foundation. After that, it was merely a matter of sitting back and waiting for the world-shaking discovery of the First Family. It must have been a long, devilishly impatient wait, because, bureaucracy being what it is, it wasn’t until March 2002, two years later, that the Horizon Foundation got through the usual red tape and legalese and began excavation. And then another six months, now under Adrian’s methodical direction, before they got to the hanging crevice and news of the First Family burst upon the world. In the meantime, up in Guadalcanal, where the red tape was pretty loose, to say the least, the lower portion of the female’s remains had long ago been excavated by de la Garza’s students and had gone onto their unheralded postmortem career as teaching tools in the polytechnic institute in Algeciras.

“I’m having a hard time with that part of it,” Julie said with a frown. “These people – Adrian, Corbin, Pru – they’re all professionals, they know what they’re doing, isn’t that true?”

“Sure, pretty much. Pru maybe isn’t quite as experienced in field-work as the others, but what’s your point?”

“My point is: How could they all have been fooled? How could Ivan have gotten away with it? Aren’t there signs when a dig had been messed with like that? Doesn’t it disturb the sediments, or strata, or whatever you call them? Can’t a competent archaeologist recognize a, a

… what do you call it, an inserted burial?”

“An intrusive burial. And yes, sure there are signs, because when you do what Ivan did – insert bones or anything else at a level they don’t belong, you necessarily disturb the beds – the layers – of sediment above it. It’s not that hard to spot.”

“Well, that’s my question. Why didn’t they spot it?”

“They did spot it, as a matter of fact. On the way back, I stopped by the conference downtown to ask Pru about it, and she said right out that there was no question about it. The burial itself was in bed IV, down at the bottom, so ordinarily, you’d expect the more recent layers – beds I, II, and III – to be intact above it.”

“But…?”

“But when a farmer with his bulldozer has been there before you, doing his damndest to turn the place into a mushroom farm, all bets are off.”

“Okay, I see that,” she said, nodding, “but I would have thought there were some kind of geological tests that could confirm it, one way or the other.”

“There are: soil tests, skeletal tests, tests on associated flora and fauna. And I have no doubt they are now going to be performed. But they’re expensive and they take time. You don’t do them unless you have some specific reason.”

“And the possibility of a hoax wasn’t a good enough reason?”

“Julie, the possibility never arose! Gunderson wasn’t the greatest excavator in the world, but he was – we thought he was – a reputable archaeologist. Of long standing. The possibility of, of-” He could hardly bring himself to say it. “-of fraud would never have crossed anybody’s mind.”

“Uh-huh. Because the science of archaeology relies on the integrity of its practitioners.”

He sighed. “That’s about it,” he said miserably. “Let’s get a bite. I forgot all about lunch.”

They walked the few blocks to Main Street more or less mentally chewing their cuds and found a palm-shaded patio table at Latino’s Classic American Diner, which, despite its name, featured an eclectic menu of European, Chinese, Tex-Mex, and Moroccan foods. Another cruise ship was in port and the streets were again mobbed, but, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the restaurant was relatively uncrowded. Julie, who wasn’t hungry, asked for an iced tea. Gideon ordered a chicken BLT on ciabatta bread and a Coke.

“So,” Julie said, “why was Ivan killed? Why was anybody killed? Why were you attacked?”

“Well, there, all we’ve got is surmise, but the most probable scenario is-”

“-That someone else besides Ivan knew the find was faked, and was desperate to keep anyone else from finding out.”

“Yes, that’s the way I see it. If you start with the first person killed, Sheila, the fact that she had those two matching vertebrae from the two different sites makes it clear that she’d found out about it. And she was going to expose it at the conference. I mean, why would she have brought them with her to Gibraltar except to use them as Exhibit A?”

“But if that’s the case, why wouldn’t the killer have gotten rid of them? Apparently he got rid of the paper she was going to present and any notes she might have had. Why leave the vertebrae? They were her proof positive. Wouldn’t he have taken them too?”

Gideon spread his hands. “My guess is that he didn’t know about them. Remember, Sheila played things pretty close to the vest, according to everyone. She was probably saving them to make a big splash at her talk. Which they would have; a huge splash.”

“But obviously she told someone, or she’d still be alive.”

“Well, yes; told, or implied, or insinuated – anyway, enough to scare him into killing her.”

“Or her,” Julie amended. “So the question is, who would Sheila have told?”

“For which I don’t have an answer, do you?”

“No, it could have been any of them.” She paused while the waiter set down their orders. “And what about what happened to you? Was that on account of that newspaper article? Someone was afraid you’d found out too? That you really had something that was going to leave Piltdown in the dust?”

“Looks like it.”

“Which it would have, I gather.”

“And still will, when it gets out.”

“And poor Ivan himself was murdered because he was going to give a speech the next day.”

“Uh-huh,” Gideon managed around a heavenly mouthful of bread, chicken, bacon, tomato, and mayonnaise.

She paused to sugar her iced tea and have a first sip. “But wait a minute,” she said thoughtfully, “we talked about this before. Ivan must have given plenty of other speeches over the years. Why would someone think he would choose to reveal it now?”

“I doubt if anyone thought he would choose to reveal it, but now-”

She finished the sentence for him. “Now someone was afraid he was might reveal it inadvertently – because of that Guadalcanal slip.”

“I think so.” He put down the sandwich. “If only I’d realized what it was about at the time, I might have been able to prevent-”

“No, you couldn’t have. There was no conceivable way you could have known what that ‘Guadalcanal’ meant. How could anyone?”

“You’re right, I know,” he said with a sigh. “Still, I can’t help thinking that if I’d been a little quicker on the uptake-”

“Now you stop that right now,” she said firmly. “Eat your sandwich. Don’t be so hard on yourself. If somebody had told you then – what was it, four days ago? – what you’ve just finished telling me, would you have believed it?”

“Not in a million years.”